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11 Of The Best Lofi Hip Hop Samples

by
Eric TerBush
March 5, 2020 • 9 min read

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In today’s modern rap scene, there is a universal usage of samples. Rappers have become more willing to sample older cuts, adding their touches to create great and unique beats. All of the tracks off of The College Dropout, the debut album of 20+ Grammy award winner Kanye West, are created with samples taken from other, lesser-known records. These samples are repurposed, creating new takes on an old or lesser-known classic.

In this vein, we highlight the best samples to have ever been used in lo-fi rap music by producers. Some have gotten old, but plenty can still get a new twist. Whether you have a new project in the works that needs a boost or you would love to hear some new and exciting rap samples one day, here’s your best lo-fi hip hop samples for production.

How to Find Hip Hop Samples, Loops, & Beats

To find Hip-Hop samples in the modern age, one does not have to look far. To find samples ready for usage, platforms such as Splice and vendors such as Vengeance and LoopCloud have thousands of options to choose from. Services like Splice offer create your own sample packs that can be created from a variety of different sample packs. For many new producers, the idea of using a sample is perceived as cheating. To dispel those concerns, give thought to this.

Adding Samples & Plugins To Your DAW

Adding samples to your DAW to an extent is dependent on the individual user’s program and hardware; however, the process is almost always the same for most popular digital audio workshops. For a user of Splice Sound, this process is as simple as clicking the desktop app and dragging and dropping the desired sample into the project on whatever track you prefer. For downloaded samples, navigate to your download folder and then select the desired sample. Drag and drop this sample into either your sampler or a track in your DAW, and you are ready to begin.

Top LoFi Hip Hop Samples

To have a sound that doesn’t feel forced—one that hasn’t gotten tired or will become dull over time—you could attempt to create an entirely new sound from scratch, or you could use samples as inspiration instead. The samples of the best rappers and producers provide fantastic inspiration that can inspire you to approach a whole new genre of music. The lo-fi snippets we’re talking about, though, don’t necessarily need to be of your favorite rappers or producers. Washed-out drums, melodies, and even beat samplings you may already be familiar with can be the perfect fit.

Without further ado, here are some vintage samples that are just begging swapped into a new song. If you’re not already studying to lo-fi hip hop beats, you might want to start now.

Day Dreaming 2, a vintage jazz-influenced sample pack from Origin Sound, is the followup to the lo-fi magnum opus Day Dreaming. Within the pack, dozens of smooth melodic loops are offered in multiple keys, each able to be chopped and screwed to perfectly match your inner hip-hop vision. While the melodic loops are the backbone of this pack, one should not discount the included drum samples. With 20 drum loops, 15 percussion loops, and dozens of individual percussion hits, the variety of sounds offers any sampler more than enough options for how to approach a given beat.

Starfall, by Laniakea Sounds, is one of the newest entrants into the realm of lo-fi hip hop samples. The culmination of 650 MB of audio samples, saxophones, basses, organs, and drums are the core of this sample pack. This sample pack offers some harmonic variation, with samples in Emaj and Cmaj primarily, at a tempo of 75 or 90 BPM. The Starfall pack is the perfect addition to the arsenal of any producer wanting to create the best lo-fi, downtempo, or soul-infused rap beats.

Lo-Fi Cuts 2, from Origin Sound, is the continuation of its predecessor lo-fi cuts. Created with the same vision, Lo-Fi Cuts 2 is filled with tasteful imperfections, and the granularity one would expect from a vinyl sample. Within the pack, each drum loop is broken down into individual stems, allowing for massive experimentation within a sampler such as ESX24. In addition to these loops, this pack features an expansive collection of stacked instrumental samples as starting points for unique compositions. For example, emotive piano progressions layered over smooth guitar lines provide both a melody and harmony to any track in progress.

Laniakea Sounds returns once again to present Afterglow – Lofi Hip Hop Jams, a collection of chilled beats and vintage instrumentals chopped and screwed into hip-hop beats. Sultry music loops with rhodes, saxophones and warm basses, are the core of this sample pack; grainy drum loops, authentic FX’s and much more are on full display throughout the pack. 650 MB of pre-processed and mastered audio loops are ready to be used in any track designed to emulate the classic styles of hip hop production. Dusty kicks, vinyl crackles, and outdoor ambiances offer one last benefit to this extensive sample pack.

Immerse yourself in the world of after-hours vibes with silky smooth rhodes, saxes, pianos, and strings created with the focus of writing Hip-Hop and Soulful RnB music. This sample pack comes packed, with over 500 MB of audio loops, samples, and one-shots ready to be dropped into any DAW.

From famed sample producer Origin Sound, Organic Vibes is yet another fantastic collection of lo-fi hip hop drum samples. With all drum loops having just one of a few keys (Fmin, Amin, Cmin) and a tempo of 85 BPM, this kit allows for massive amounts of experimentation through layering kicks, snares, hi-hats and more. For those who prefer constructing their patterns in a sampler, the Organic Vibes pack comes with 120 individual drum hits, offering a plethora of options.

What’s in the pack?

A generous 498 sounds ranging from 0:01 to the outlying 4:45 seconds. Most are under 0:23 seconds.

Influenced by the sound of bedroom producers and underground artists from the golden age of Hip-hop, Breaks & Beats by Sample Magic is a truly massive collection of MPC drum samples, reworked drum breaks, enormous production, and lo-fi audio samples. The pack offers a gigantic 767 Lofi hip hop drum samples ready for use, with over 100 kicks, hats, and snare samples alone. Indeed the perfect sample pack for those looking to explore the percussion of classic bedroom rap, although the pack does not offer much in the ways of melodic or harmonic samples. If you find yourself wishing that you could create songs like MadLib, this is the perfect drum pack for you.

What’s in the pack?

The largest collection of sounds on this list with 769, ranging from 0:01 to 0:25 seconds

Classic hip hop melded with lofi artistry

BPM clock in at a range of 78 to 118

A fairly broad range of keys, A-sharp and A-sharp minor hold the majority

The first offering from famed artist Sam Lang, Sam Lang Vol. 1 captures the artist’s unique style while offering broad utility in sample sounds. The free lofi hip hop samples found within the pack include Harrowing bells, sprawling soundscapes, and vintage pianos; all of these elements provide the inspiration any aspiring lo-fi producer would need to create dirty, southern style beats.

All samples within the pack come with both BPM and Key indicators, making their usage in songs as simple as possible. A real unique feature of this pack is the level of care that went into crafting the samples found within. Each guitar line, piano loop, and every other instrumental sample was played on authentic vintage instruments and captured using recording equipment from decades passed.

What’s in the pack?

50 samples to work through, relatively shorter in length from 0:07 to 0:15 seconds

While it’s hard to deny that rap has moved towards a darker, grittier sound in recent years, some producers still prefer uplifting, happier beats. Thankfully, Origin Sounds have just that. Morning Coffee is a chill, sunrise vibe sample pack, radiating the emotion of early hour inspiration. Lively jazz pianos and upright bass samples are two areas of focus within this pack. However, the most significant feature of Morning Coffee is not the samples themselves, its the fact that each and every one comes with a corresponding MIDI track ready to be tweaked, chopped, altered, and modified to your exact tastes. For intermediate producers, having the ability to change a single note within a chord progression to match a project is a fantastic benefit of Morning Coffee. Similarly, for beginners, the ability to see how chord progressions and melodies are composed note by note gives ample opportunity to deconstruct songs and learn the patterns that make music live.

Laniakea enters the list for the third time. By the way, Laniakea, is Hawaiian for “Immense Heaven” — and honestly, that makes sense.

For those seeking authentic vintage sounds, look no further than Lo-Fi Beats. Meticulously crafted to reproduce authentic vinyl sampling techniques, each and every element could be from a dusty Vinyl found at a local thrift store. Featuring grainy kicks, vinyl pops, audio distortion and more, Lo-Fi beats offer the perfect way to create your chill music to study to. Samples within the pack are layered upon each other to replicate the original technique for sampling: cutting from a record.

Samples: No shame in inspiration

In rap, production with sampling is often a tricky business. While songwriters want to capture their own experiences through words, they often wish to take a load off by borrowing an instrument, tone, or mood from a classic recording to create a new, original tune. And in their desire to be innovative and edgy, producers often craft a beat using well-known samples to complement an existing piece of music; giving new life and context to the original. Case in point, the lo-fi, thumping beat heard within Rae Sremmurd’s “No Flex Zone,” the famous track of theirs off the group’s long-awaited 2018 album, SremmLife.

As far as rappers go, there’s no shortage of lo-fi samples used in today’s rap music scene. In fact, if one had to create a list of current artists with the most iconic lo-fi samples, it’d be hard not to include the likes of Kendrick Lamar, XXXTentacion, Travis Scott, Kanye West and more. If dozens of Grammys don’t give samples their proper respect, I don’t know what would.

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